The Importance of Paper Cuts
by FrostyPhoenix
Summary: Rose Tyler couldn't be happier in her life. She's married and made a life with her Doctor, the Eleventh...there's just one problem, though. Can past events, long dismissed, have more meaning than one can realize? In Rose's case, it will mean one of the best things in all the universe. Eleven/Rose


**hello! Sorry! Anyway, I wrote this because I was feeling fluffy. For all you outrages, IM CONTINUEING WITH THE LITTLE GUYS! Yay! Enjoy! This is made to be a one-shot but can be added to if you want. **

She hears her son's thin little wails, distressed and fearful, and her maternal instinct spurs into overdrive. Her head pops off the pillow faster than humanly possible and she scrambles out of the large bed, struggling to kick off the warm sheets that are tangled around her legs—then she freezes when she realizes that her husband isn't in the bed with her. His side is empty, a small hollow still remaining where he got up. She strains her ears for her baby's cries, but he's gone quiet.

The Doctor must be up there.

For a moment, Rose is torn. Her feet are still under the covers, encased in a sheath of enticing warmth. But she hesitantly pulls them out, shivering slightly, and slips on her dressing gown.

Maybe he needs help.

Oh, probably not—but she's got to see her Doctor. She's got to see her Doctor, doing domestics.

It's a beautiful life they have—Rose and the Doctor on the TARDIS, with their beloved son Jack, just as it should be.

Their story of reunite is actually quite simple. Rose fell through a crack in space in time, pulled out of the alternate universe and into the one she was born in. Except she appeared in America—Utah, in the desert, To be precise. And according to her Doctor, he had received mysterious summons in a TARDIS blue envelope with GPS coordinates, a date, and a time. Against his better judgement he'd followed them, and found heat-stroked Rose Tyler in a booth nursing an icy soda.

They didn't question his amazing fortune. They just swore to stay together forever.

The rest is history.

Trying to be as quiet as possible, Rose tip-toed up the stairs—yes, the stairs. The Doctor had made a bit of a design change when they got married, creating a doorway that led straight from the console. If you opened that door, it was like you were passing the threshold of an ordinary, beautiful little house. Holding her breath, she crept up to the closed door of Jack's room, glancing at the floor. Her heart leapt with excitement when she saw shifting shadows—like footsteps—at the bottom of the door. She carefully eased the door open soundlessly, just a crack...

"Y'know, when I was little like you I dreamt of the stars..."

Rose froze at the sound of her husband's tender, whispering voice. It was very rare that he sounded so rawly...nostalgic. He was a Time Lord; almost everything that had technically already happened for him was the present, and anything so far back in the past...considering what had happened to his planet, nostalgia was dangerous for him.

"No, they don't actually look like that," he said warmly, chuckling. Rose heard the familiar hum of his sonic screwdriver, then a series of coos from Jack.

"I _know_," the Doctor whispered excitedly, and Rose could only imagine what he had done to prove such speech from Jack. She, unfortunately, didn't retain her husband's gift of understanding the infant's dialect, so from what he translated for her Jack wasn't the most talkative baby in the universe.

For a moment, all was quiet.

Jack let out a soft murmur, and his father sighed.

"Well, I think it's fair to say—quite frankly, too—that I was _unspeakably_ lucky."

Rose held her breath.

"I'm old, Jackie. I'm so, so old. And I've done some bad things." His voice was soft and sad, and Rose ached for him.

Jack cooed.

The Doctor scoffed, his voice a bit lighter. "I'm afraid what I did all that time ago was much worse than telling your mum she was wrong, if you can believe that."

Rose bit back a giggle, smacking her hand over her mouth with a soft _slap_.

"But she's always right, of course. Of course she is. Because that's where my luck came in, kiddo. When she was in danger, I tried it send her away. I wanted to keep her safe, because I loved her. Maybe I didn't realize it then, but I did. But your mum—" he paused for a moment. "Your amazing, incredible mum...she came back, Jack. She did the impossible, and saved my life. She did it again, later. And when I thought I lost her...I thought I was going to die just because she wasn't there."

All the blood was suddenly roaring in Rose's ears. She knew it was silly—she knew he loved her, as she did him—they were _married_, for God's sake! But just hearing him say it like that—it sent her head spinning like a top.

"But then—she came back to me." Her Doctor's voice was soft. "She came back, and I became the luckiest man in all the universes."

For another peaceful moment, they were silent.

Jack muttered something in his jibberish, and the Doctor let out a soft noise of surprise. "Really, Jack? Honestly? Are you sure?"

Not for the first time, Rose wished she could understand them.

"It is really true that mummy is listening at the door?"

Shock tore through her chest—and she eased the door open, poking her head in and trying not to look sheepish. Her Doctor, clad in his jim jams, was grinning at her, his three-month-old son awake and alert, cradled in his arms. Jack's bedside projector, which sent simple white stars rotating slowly on the walls, is now covering every inch of space in a blanket of the multicolored galaxy.

She raises and eyebrow at her husband.

Show-off.

She walks over to her boys and reaches out, taking her sleep-warm baby in her arms, nuzzling his head with her nose of and giving him a tender kiss on the cheek. Her Doctor wraps his arms around her shoulders, his green eyes twinkling faintly in the dim light.

"And that's where Daddy gets it wrong, doesn't he, Jack?" She murmurs to her son. "Thinkin' he can get rid of me so easily. Well, both of you better understand that I'm not going anywhere—not too soon, anyway."

The Doctor's soft smile melts when she says that, and Rose buries her face in her baby's soft peach-fuzz hair...

Because if they have any problems, this is it. A time lord and a human—it's hardly ever been done before. Their son on his own is a phenomenon—a miracle who fortunately inherited his father's two hearts and regenerations. He'll grow to be in his mid-twenties—and stay that way until he regenerates.

But Rose—she's human. She's human with a single human heart and a single human life.

And one day she'll have to leave them when she finally gets too old.

Rose draws back slightly to find Jack's head resting on her chest, sound asleep. Wordlessly, the Doctor gently slips Jack out of her grip and places him reverently in the cradle. He takes her hand and guides her out of his room. He quietly shuts the door.

Rose can't help it—she lets out a quiet sob and her husband draws her to his chest. She wraps her arms around him, fighting back tears as he rests his chin on the top of her head. She's crying for the future—crying for the things that she'll never see, crying for the problems that her boys will have to solve without her, crying for the days that they'll miss her.

"Shhh...shhh, my Rose." Her husband murmurs soothingly. "No tears yet, please. Not yet." He pulls back slightly, taking her face in his hands and tenderly wiping away her warm, salty tears with his thumbs. "Don't cry, love," he whispers, and to her alarm he's smiling slightly. "I've got something to show you, first."

Despite her mood, Rose can't help her curiosity, and follows him as he tugs her out of their little house within a home and guides her to the med bay. He directs her to lay down on the little table as he sets up this giant, hulking machine—all with that crazy little half smile on his face. Several times she questions him, but never is given a straight answer, or sometimes an answer at all. "Just hold still," he says, and she complies impatiently.

For what seems like an eternity, he positions this giant whirring mechanism above her, giving her a disembodied sense that she's at the hospital, being examined for god-knows-what.

Finally, he removes it and she watches in amusement as he shifts from foot to foot with impatience as he waits for the giant machine to spit out the results on a piece of paper—

With a bang, a white blur shoots out of the slot and darts towards Rose—she swings to the side just in time, but the single piece of paper skims her cheek slices the skin. As the paper collides with the wall and slumps to the ground, Rose feels a stinging pain and gasps as something warm trickles to the corner of her mouth, making her taste something odd and metallic. She touches it with her fingertips—it's dark and red.

It's one hell of a paper cut—yet just a little cut, nothing serious, but the Doctor instantly is at her side, taking her uninjured cheek in his hand and turning her head, looking it over and babbling apologies—

"Doctor! I'm fine!" She laughs despite the sting it causes. She gestures to the offending paper that lays face down on the floor. "What's that say, then?"

The Doctor starts as if he forgot it was there and scrambles over to it, sweeping it up and looking it over furiously as Rose took a seat back on the table, waiting expectantly. His eyes roved over the page, his mouth working furiously with frustration...

And then, he evidently sees something big because his eyes widen and he freezes like a gun has been put to his temple.

"Doctor?" She says hesitantly, eyeing his slack jaw and draining color. "It's bad, yeah?" She swallows, her mouth suddenly dry. "Um...how exactly bad is it?"

He still doesn't respond, only lifts his eyes to stare at Rose for a moment before gawking back down at the paper.

"Doctor—"

She's cut off when he lets out a shout of ecstatic laughter and darts at her, picking her up and twirling her around, grinning so bright it's almost blinding.

Rose giggles. "Okay—good, then?"

He sets her down, his eyes sparking with that mad energy that she loves. "Triple-helix DNA!" He shouts joyfully, jumping up and down. "Triple helix DNA!"

"And that's good, is it?" She teases, but his next words nearly choke her in their importance.

"_Time Lords_ have triple helix DNA!"

She freezes as he dances around in victory, and in shock she presses one hand to her chest.

_Bum-dam, buh-bum, buh-bum, buh-bum..._

And with the other, she presses slightly to the left...

_Buh-bum, buh-bum, buh-bum, buh-bum..._

And then, trying not to scream, she digs her fingers into the tender hollow next to her windpipe.

_One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four..._

She has two hearts.

"Rose?" She looks up at the Doctor to his concerned voice. He looks worried for her. "Is everything...are you alright?"

"Yeah..." She says quietly. "I just—" her voice breaks as a lump forms in her throat and a grin_ stretches across her face—she probably looks insane. "I just didn't know how I missed that!"

He grins in return and sweeps her into another hug, but before she can hold him properly he releases her, taking her hand and pressing it to her injured cheek—letting her feel the smooth, unmarked skin.

She gasps in shock, searching for the cut—but finds nothing.

Her hearts are thumping with amazement in her chest, and her Doctor leans close, his lips grazing her ear, "Accelerated healing. Just one of the perks."

He pulls back, searching her face apprehensively.

She stares at him, her brain clicking it all together.

"I'm Time Lord."

He grins brightly, pressing an ecstatic kiss to her lips—but then he pulls back, suddenly stuttering. "Oh! Sorry! The reason it happened was—well, your DNA has been constantly changing—well—remember when you took the time vortex? It—"

Roses presses a finger to his lips, effectively stopping his speech. She hugs him close, squeezing her eyes shut, and whispers in his ear.

"I don't care _how_ it happened, love. I just... Does this mean..." She can hardly form the words, but he waits patiently. "Does this mean we'll be together...forever?"

"Oh...my Rose." He breathes it like a prayer. "Of course. We'll be together always."

He buries his face in her shoulder, tightening his arms around her.

"Always."

**Aw! I'm sorry, okay? Anyway, I love this little thing, and I hope you enjoyed it! But Anyway, if you want more added on to it, just ask! Review! **


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